Home is where the yurt is...

Dylan
Evans is a scientist who thought the future lay with designing
emotionally intelligent robots. Now he has turned his back on
technology to set up a commune where he and 15 volunteers will live as
primitive a life as possible — the route, he believes, to Utopia

Anjana Ahuja

Dylan Evans used to think that technology would deliver paradise on
Earth: “We’d be in this magical world predicted by H. G. Wells, where
robots did the dirty work and people had masses of leisure time.” Which
is why he ended up at the University of the West of England building
clever robots capable of recognising human emotions.

But
the closer he came to crafting this perfect future, the less attractive
it seemed. Now he is renouncing his university career — and technology
— to fashion his own primitive paradise. Next month, he will head to a
secret location in Scotland to prepare the groundwork for the Utopia
experiment, in which he and others will imagine themselves to be
survivors of an apocalypse. They will grow and kill their own food,
shun television, draw water from a nearby stream and ration their use
of electricity.

A changing cast of about 15 people — strangers
who have contacted Evans through his website and who profess skills
such as butchery or gardening — will wander through Utopia, staying in
the moneyless community for a maximum of three months.

The haven will welcome men and women, young and old, singles and
couples. There will be public dormitories and private areas, and
perhaps even a “love yurt” in which to snatch romantic moments. So far,
applicants include a former RAF training officer, a graduate in peace
studies, a human rights lawyer, a couple of teenagers anxious to occupy
themselves on a gap year, a professor of engineering, and
self-sufficiency enthusiasts. Utopia will disband after 18 months.

One
wonders how Evans — a personable lecturer who has written popular
science books (one was required reading for Keanu Reeves and other
actors in The Matrix) and contributes opinion pieces to
broadsheets — conceived such an odd idea. He laughs when I ask if it is
the product of a midlife crisis; the 39-year-old, who was married
briefly in his twenties to an Argentinian archaeologist, is recently
out of a long-term relationship, with no professorship on the horizon
(although a chair “wouldn’t tempt me in the slightest”).

His
explanation, instead, is a mix of intellectual and personal
justification. Humans, he believes, were designed by evolution to live
in small, primitive communities and this experiment will test the
theory.

He wanted out of conventional academia anyway because
“the kind of intellectuals I admire operate at the margins” and he
aspires to join them. There’s a fivepossibly-six-figure book deal in
the pipeline plus a gaggle of television companies on the scent of an
upmarket reality television show (although a poll of would-be Utopians
reveals little enthusiasm for being filmed).

In any case, he’s now a pariah in academic circles for condemning much of science as trivial. Take this, from one of his Guardian
articles in 2005: “There is nothing wrong with dedicating your life to
collecting rather trivial facts, just as there is nothing wrong with
earning a living by cleaning toilets. But nobody pretends that cleaning
toilets is the most noble activity to which man can aspire, while there
are many who say that about science.”

That, he admits, “pissed
people off”. There is a strong whiff of burnt bridges; Evans has no
real choice but to turn his back on academia. And, given his media
experience and intellectual aspirations, Utopia begins to look like a
shrewd exit strategy.

We are sitting, on a hot, sunny day, in
the garden of Evans’s small but characterful Cotswolds pad. He is the
picture of the relaxed, trendy academic — dark jeans, black T-shirt and
gold-rimmed glasses — and happily allows me to direct the tea-making in
his kitchen. He has sold up to a neighbour, and will use some — all, if
necessary — of the £90,000 profit to fund the 18-month Utopia
experiment. Socrates, Evans’s black cat, who prowls around my feet,
will accompany his master north.

While on a lecture tour in
Mexico last year, Evans visited the stone cities abandoned by the Mayan
civilisation. “They’re such mysterious, eerie places — you can’t help
but wonder what happened to them,” he says, snacking on Bombay mix.
“They weren’t invaded — their civilisation just imploded because they
overexploited their environment. I began to think: could the same thing
happen to our industrialised civilisation? So far, hundreds of
civilisations have collapsed — why do we think ours is immune?

“And
what would life be like in the aftermath? It suddenly struck me that
such a collapse might not actually be a bad thing. It would be terrible
while it happened because millions of people would die, which is
obviously horrible, but those who survive might have the best chance of
creating Utopia that we’ve ever had. I realised that if I was going to
explore this issue, I’d have to act it out.”

He is convinced
that a return to “primitivism” — a more basic way of life — is the
route to human happiness and possibly even its survival. Participating
in cutting-edge robotics research only confirmed his belief: “One of
the main applications of my work is social robotics, such as building
robot companions for old people. But is this really the best solution
to loneliness? Why not get people to talk to each other? Why do we look
for technological fixes, a pill or a robot, to solve problems that are
fundamentally social in nature?”

Evans, a graduate in
linguistics from Southampton University, was also deeply influenced by
his time at the London School of Economics in the early Nineties,
during which he collected a PhD in the philosophy of science. At that
time, the LSE was the epicentre of the evolutionary psychology
movement, which theorised that aspects of human behaviour were
hardwired relics of our ancestral past.

From this flowered
Evans’s belief that humans were no longer living in the kind of society
that suited them: “We evolved over three million years — we spent 99.9
per cent of that time living in small hunter-gatherer bands with
minimal technology, such as bows and arrows.”

Then, 10,000
years ago, came farming and an explosion in food production, which
could suddenly sustain huge populations and fuel progress: “The
dominant view is that our current lifestyle is indisputably better,”
Evans says. “I’m beginning to think it’s not indisputable — in fact,
our modern lifestyle is something we’re extremely badly adapted to. No
society has more leisure time than the hunter gatherers. On average
they spend two hours a day gathering, preparing and cooking food. The
rest of the time they sleep a lot, play a lot, make love, and tell
stories. The concept of working to survive is unknown, as is the
concept of hierarchy.” Primitive cultures, he says, report lower rates
of mental disorders, and have more control over their lives.

Evans
compares human beings to animals that have been taken out of their
natural habitat and reared in captivity. The result is high rates of
stress, disease and psychological suffering. “I think of this (the
Utopia experiment) as gradually ‘re-wilding’ people,” he laughs.

He
has banned TV and mobile phones, but sanctioned the internet (because
he believes that the web could re-knit itself after a disaster).
Medicines are fine (“this is play-acting, not religious cult”), and if
the community collectively decides to import other conveniences, that’s
OK too. The important thing, Evans says, is that the Utopians actively
think about what they need, rather than taking it for granted.

The
first Utopians will arrive in March 2007 — between now and then, Evans
will be converting a barn (on farmland belonging to a friend) for
communal living, erecting yurts, and installing toilets and
solar-powered showers. He has already visited eco-villages, ashrams and
monasteries to see how other “intentional communities” operate. He is
planning get-togethers later this year, so the Utopians can meet before
joining him.

Evans has an extremely rosy view of how the
community will sort out disagreements: “Our wild, or primary, nature,
which has been stunted by the way we live today, is much more
trustworthy than we think. And it flourishes brilliantly in our natural
habitat. Look at the way hunter-gatherers make decisions, punish
transgressors and counter dominant people — they know how to put people
in their place. I want to explore whether those social mechanisms will
work.” The community’s revolving-door policy, he adds, should prevent
boredom and stop cliques forming.

What about a relentlessly
disruptive individual? “The community could, of course, decide to eject
someone.” He probably wouldn’t mind the odd showdown — he views modern
life as lacklustre and insipid, with people resorting to soap operas or
violent video games for an injection of synthetic passion.

Isn’t
Utopia going to be a seething hotbed of sexual tension? One potential
participant, who is perhaps wedded too literally to the postapocalyptic
scenario, has pointed out in the online discussion group that survivors
will need to repopulate the planet. “Sex will be another subject of
discussion. Every society has a way of regulating sexual behaviour.
Humans are not monogamous and not promiscuous — we form fairly stable
pair bonds but they’re not unbreakable. Then again, the short stay
might mean those issues don’t become prevalent.”

Evans plans
single-sex dormitories and a “quiet” yurt, in which each community
member can spend, say, one night a week. “You could take in a lover
with you, or just a friend, or be on your own. We need to get the right
balance between privacy and community.”

Is he secretly hoping
to find the woman of his dreams in Utopia? “The idea of a bourgeois
existence, with a wife and kids, appals me. But if I met a woman who
could live in a yurt?” His face brightens. “I don’t think I’d mind.”